


Renowned and Illustrious

by PrincessTriSarahTops



Category: Grey's Anatomy, Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Medical Procedures, Medical Trauma, Mild Language, PG 13 levels of violent, Rating: PG13
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 06:38:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 15,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19458439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessTriSarahTops/pseuds/PrincessTriSarahTops
Summary: Meredith Grey, is a renowned surgeon living in Seattle. She is known throughout the medical community both for her personal efforts in school and her mother's reputation. Her step-brother Anthony Stark, is a an illustrious inventor living in his father's shadow. As far apart as two siblings could be, Tony and Mer will learn that they are much closer than meets the eye.*Expect MCU level of violence and Grey's Anatomy level of medical talk and procedures.*Also all the Chapter Titles are songs.





	1. Drowning Lessons

* * *

It had been absolute chaos. Doctors, EMTs, Fire and Rescue, civilians. People just zipping around everywhere. A mass casualty is what they were calling it. By definition that meant Emergencies services were overwhelmed by the number of sever casualties. But the only doctor on the scene who was feeling overwhelmed was Derek Shepherd. For the most part things were cleaned up. All emergent patients had been rushed to nearby hospitals as well as non emergent. So really he should have felt in control. All that was left to do was get on the nearest rig and hitch a ride back to Seattle Grace Hospital.

The problem was, when he turned around to look for his fellow surgeon, Doctor Meredith Grey, she wasn't anywhere to be seen. He was sure she hadn't gone back to the hospital yet. If anyone had asked him to explain how he knew this for certain, he couldn't. But he knew. He knew she was there and something was wrong. So he started to search the scene. He found a little girl, who probably wasn't much older than seven or eight. Derek remembered seeing Meredith with the girl a while ago.

"Hey, you okay?" He asked, getting down to the little girl's level. She didn't respond. She was just staring at him. "Did, did the doctor bring you here? Hmm. Meredith?" He asked, hoping for an answer. "Is Meredith okay?" The girl shook her head 'no'. He felt like his heart had stopped. He held the little girl's hand and tried not to show just how scared he was.

"Just think. Which way is she? Which way." The little girl was clearly in shock. She wasn't speaking, and she looked scared. Derek tried not to push her, but she might have been his only hope for finding Meredith. "Take all the time you need, you're doing great." He did his best to coax the answer out. The girl looked around with water in her eyes before walking away. He followed her to the end of a dock near the disaster.

"Okay." He breathed looking out at the vast ocean. "Use your words. Where exactly is Meredith?" Again the girl didn't speak. Instead to pointed to the sea.

He didn't hesitate diving into the ocean, knowing there was a low probability that he would find his...well he didn't exactly know what he and Meredith were to each other at the moment. But he did know that he was the only one who knew she was missing and if he didn't jump in to search for her, she would die. So into the freezing water he dove.

She was already blue. As a doctor he medically understood what that meant. She drowned. There was no way of knowing just how long she'd been in that water either. But still he rushed her to the nearest ambulance. Working with a team of EMT's, Meredith was strapped into a backboard, loaded on to a stretcher and on her way back to Seattle Grace. While the sirens wailed and the driver hauled ass to get back to hospital as quickly as possible, Derek was in the back of the rig aggressively performing CPR.

"Our ETA is five minutes!" The driver called over his shoulder to the neurosurgeon. Derek didn't reply. He just continued counting out compressions and rescue breaths.

"One, Two, Three, Four, Five." Breath. "Once, Two, Three, Four, Five." Breath. "One, Two, Three, Four, Five." Breath. He didn't dare let up. Not for a second. If that second was the difference between saving her life and letting her go, he wouldn't risk it.

"What do we got?" Miranda Bailey, a fellow surgeon opened, the back doors of the ambulance upon its arrival at Seattle Grace.

"Jane Doe. Hypothermic, Drowning..." The EMT began to explain what he knew.

"It's not a Jane Doe." Derek told Bailey frantically. He still hadn't stopped CPR. "It's Meredith Grey. It's Meredith."

"Derek?" Miranda was surprised to see him back there pumping on a woman's chest. Once he said it was Meredith Grey, it made more senses. Those two had been drawn together like flies to honey since their first day. "Derek, how long as she been down?" She climbed into the ambulance and stood beside him.

"I don't know! She's...she's alive."

"Derek..." The man was a neurosurgeon. He knew that a body can't survive if it wasn't breathing. A person could only last five to ten minutes. After that they risked serious brain damage. It had to have been a few minutes ride just to the hospital. If Meredith had drowned, things didn't look good for her.

"She's alive." Derek insisted. He knew what Bailey was trying to say. He knew what he should be thinking, but every irrational part of his brain was telling him to continue CPR. So that's what he did.

"Ok," she sighed. "Look, I need you to help me get her inside."


	2. Oh Brother

* * *

"Excuse me, I'm looking for Dr. Grey?" A tall fit guy with a goatee stepped up the nurses' station. He flashed the nurse a winning smile. She recognized him immediately, but for politeness sake she did not say so. It was a hospital after all. Whatever had brought the CEO to Seattle Grace's surgical floor couldn't be good. 

"Did you say Dr. Grey?" A doctor in a lab coat asked from behind him. Her blonde hair was in a high ponytail and her brown eyes shined as she talked to him.

"Well, hello!" He winked. "I'd love to play doctor with you." The doctor seemed to be used to this sort of treatment. She just rolled her eyes.

"Sir, I'm _Doctor_ Isobel Stevens. Are you looking for Meredith or Elis Grey?"

"Elis is here too?" The smirk faded from the man's face. Of course Dr. Stevens had no way of knowing that he was terrified of Elis, because she had no way of knowing that Elis Grey was his stepmother.

"You're...you're looking for Elis Grey?" A new doctor walked over from down the hall. "Hi, I'm George O'Malley. I'm one of Elis' doctors. I can bring you up to speed on her case, but I'm sorry, who are you in relation to the patient?" 

"I'm not here to see Elis." The man insisted firmly. "My name is Tony Stark, the billionaire. Perhaps you've heard of me?" He rolled his eyes in annoyance at their blank expressions. Of course if these doctors were anything like Meredith they probably didn't have time to watch TV or the news, but they should at least know who he was. "I got a call from this place saying that my sister drowned. Now can someone please tell me where Dr. Meredith Grey is?" Tony was getting angry now. He didn't fly across the country just for this run around.

"Meredith? Someone called you because of Meredith?" George felt the blood drain from his face. He didn't know much about Meredith's brother, other than they had once been very close and for some reason grew apart. Things had to be pretty bad if someone had called him.

"Didn't I just say that?" Tony sighed. He couldn't understand how Mer worked in a place like this. she had a very low tolerance for stupidity and thus far that was all he had seen from the staff at Seattle Grace Hospital. "I got a call, technically my assistant took the call, but the doctor's name was some profession...Farmer, Baker..."

"It was Shepherd." A sharply dressed red headed woman had just stepped off one of the elevators. It was Tony's assistant, Pepper Potts. She had honed in on her boss' voice like sonar. Pepper introduced herself before explaining to the doctors that she had taken the call from a Derek Shepherd.

"Oh I just saw him." O'Malley seemed relieved. "He was heading towards Elis' room. I can take you there."

"While you do that I'll head down to the E.R. and see if I can get an update." Dr. Stevens rushed off. As she disappeared, George waved for Pepper and Tony to follow him.

"Mr. Stark are you aware that your step-mother has a pretty severe case of Alzheimer's Disease?"

" I know that she has the disease, but it hadn't progressed very far when I saw her last." Tony had hoped to never seen Elis again, but he thought it was best to keep that thought to himself. Doctors didn't tend to care about the nitty-gritty family stuff that happens outside of their hospital.

"You might want to prepare yourself. She may not remember who you are or she might think you are someone else." George told them as he led the way through the surgical floor to Elis Grey's room. 

"I think I can handle her." Tony wrinkled his nose in a way that made him seem more arrogant and condescending than ever. George got the impression that Mer's brother didn't like him very much. The feeling definitely was mutual.

"Please excuse him, Dr. O'Malley." Pepper apologized. "Mr. Stark understands machines better than he does people."

"Mr. Stark?" Derek turned away from Elis' bed to see Meredith's rich brother and his assistant. "I'm Dr. Shepherd," he introduced with an outstretched hand. "I'm both your step-mother's neurosurgeon and your sisters..."

"McDreamy?" Tony snorted, shaking Derek's hand. "Your Meredith's McDreamy neurosurgeon?" Both men let their arms drop to their sides. Derek smiled.

"You've heard about that?" He ran a hand through his hair.

"Oh yeah." Tony smirked. He turned to introduce Pepper, when his step-mother started barking from her bed.

"Howard! Howard where have you been?" She was glaring at her step-son, obviously convinced that he was his father. "Tony's locked himself in the basement again..."

"Alzheimer's." Derek explained sympathetically.

"Trust me, it's not the first time she's accused me of being exactly like him. _I'm Tony_ , you grouchy old hag!" He yelled at her from the doorway. "Don't give me that look, Pep." He added, sensing her disapproval. "Take every negative thought you've ever had about me, multiply it by oh, a thousand? And then maybe, _just maybe,_ you'd be close to how I feel about Elis Grey." Neither George nor Derek said anything to the contrary. They had both heard enough stories from Meredith to know the sort of damage Elis could do to a person.

"Besides," Tony clap his hands together. "We're not here to see her. Doc McSteamy, what can you tell me about my sister? I assume since you called, you have some information. And she is the reason I came all the way out to Seattle. Because honestly of all the places, Seattle? So details, please, you gotta give me something here..." He snapped his fingers waiting for someone to answer.

"She drowned." Derek said. "We were on the scene of a ferry boat accident. Somehow she ended up in the water. It was quite some time before anyone noticed she had even gone missing, but I-I found her and I pulled her out...but..." Derek explained. He didn't worry about being too graphic or telling Tony too much. He could tell just from their small interaction that the billionaire was not easily shaken. for his part, Tony tried to listen and nod at all the right times but truth be told, he didn't really care how it happened so much as what was happening now. He knew that Meredith really seemed to like McAdjective so he was trying to play nice. At least for now.

"Where is she now? Can I see her?"

"I'm afraid not, Mr. Stark." George frowned. "She currently has no heartbeat. The last we heard her body temperature was eighty-six degrees."

"So you're telling me she's..." Tony looked to Pepper for confirmation. His scientific brain was telling him that if there was no heartbeat his sister was dead, but he hoped with all his heart that someone would tell him that was not the case.

"Not yet." Dr. Stevens entered the room. Her ponytail swinging back and forth from her quickened pace. "I'm sorry, she's still not in good place, but she is still alive. They've tried warming her up. They, that is Bailey and the Chief, they think if they can get her temperature up, her heart will start again. All we can do right now is wait."

"Did I see a bar across the street?" Tony asked. All three doctors nodded. "Great. Well Pepper, you stay here and if anyone needs me, I'll be hanging out across the street with the best Scotch this piss poor town can offer."


	3. A Little Less Conversation

* * *

Tony swaggered into Joe's Bar across the street from the hospital. It was late in the afternoon on a weekday, unsurprisingly the place was all but empty. Only a haggard woman sat at a stool, talking with the Bar's owner. It was Christina Yang, Meredith's best friend. She'd fled the hospital after Dr. Montgomery had suggested that she, Stevens and O'Malley prepare themselves for the worst. The majority of Christina's hair was twisted in a knot on the back of her head, but large tufts of it were sticking straight out. She had buried herself and Joe in a pile of bags from the ninety-nine cent store.

"You're not getting this are you?" She paused to take a swing from her bottle of beer. "Okay, this is ninety-nine cents, okay?" She gestured to the array of virtually useless junk between them. "You can buy _anything_ for ninety-nine cents! Ok...Okay..." She searched around the legs of her barstool until she found what she was looking for, a cheaply made children's chair. "It's small. It's, um, a tiny size. It have cat-type creatures on it, but it is a chair. For ninety-nine cents, you can buy furniture. That is America, man."

"That's Taiwan, man." Tony snorted. He approached the bar.

"Aren't you Tony Stark?" Joe questioned in surprise as the billionaire sat down.

"The one and only. Are you Joe? I sure hope so because if the place is called _Joe's_ at least someone's name should be Joe. Is it her? Is her name Joe?"

"It's me." The bar tender chuckled. "I'm the owner of the bar and my name is Joe. What can I get for you Mr. Stark?"

"The strongest thing from your top shelf. Assuming this is an alcoholic bar and not one of those trendy Seattle coffee bars or something." Joe nodded. He turned to prepare his new customer a drink. Tony drummed his fingers for a few minutes, but he couldn't tolerate the silence. He turned to the woman next to him noticing her medical scrubs. They were to same ones worn by the doctors at Seattle Grace.

"Wasn't there like a serious yacht accident or something? Shouldn't you be at the hospital?" She didn't reply to him. He leaned forward and whispered to Joe. "Who's the bag lady?"

"She's not a bag lady." Joe defended. "That's Doctor Christina Yang. She works across the street."

"Christina? As in Meredith's Christina?" Tony accepted the glass that the bartender offered him. "I'd thought you'd be glued to her side."

"I am coping." The surgeon huffed. "What about you? You're not exactly brother of the year."

"Yeah well I'm coping too. Her next one's on me."

* * *

At the hospital, O'Malley and Stevens had been put to work in the clinic as a way to keep their mind off of their friend. Having no real desire to be around Elis Grey, Derek led Pepper out to the waiting room. As they sat down both surgeon and assistance couldn't help but feel they didn't belong. Through the room families of the victims of the ferry accident were seated. Some were leaning on each other support, others silently wiped away tears. Derek shifted uncomfortable in his seat, wishing someone would at the very least let him hold Meredith's hand. Pepper straightened her suit jacket wishing desperately that Tony hadn't left her alone. A man sitting next to Derek leaned over.

"Who are you here for?" he asked.

"What?" The surgeon asked, facing the stranger.

"I'm waiting on my wife." The man explained. "A car hit her. Can you believe that, on the ferry? She was run over on the ferry. They haven't said much. Hard as hell to get any of these people to talk to you." Pepper decided to let her companion do the talking since she technically wasn't the one waiting on a family member.

"Yeah, I'm..." Derek decided at the last second no to tell the man that he worked at the hospital. Thankfully he had changed out of his scrubs beforehand. "My girlfriend was there, too. And I don't know. I don't know what's gonna happen."

"So you two aren't...?" The man pointed at Pepper.

"Oh, no! I'm just..." Pepper started to say, but Derek interrupted.

"She's a friend of the family." She smiled at him gratefully. There was no way to easily explain that she was just the assistance of his girlfriend's brother. The man looked back at them both sympathetically.

"It's out of our hands. It's up to the doctors now."

"Yeah." Derek nodded. "Yeah."

"What's her name?"

"Meredith." Pepper told the man, afraid that Derek might not be able to manage her name.

"I'll put her in my prayers." The stranger smiled.


	4. Stayin' Alive

* * *

At first drinking with Christina had been...what was the word? Fun? No. Amusing? Not even close. Whatever the word, Tony had found it helpful to toss back a few drinks with someone who looked as awful as he felt. For awhile the pair lived in some sort of alternate reality. One silently convincing the other that their active alcohol consumption was in no way a cry for help. It was a good run while it lasted, and then Yang's boyfriend had to show up and ruin it.

"Some do, you know, come back from this." Dr. Burke, a fellow Cardiothoracic Surgeon, introduced himself to the Billionaire and informed him that there was still no change in Meredith's condition. Despite the lack of improvement he remained optimistic. Christina and Tony, who remained drunk from both alcohol and their own bitterness, did not share his view of the situation.

"You know what? I am not a civilian." Christina slurred. "I know the science here. It's drinking time."

"Not yet." Burke disagreed. "You have a responsibility to Meredith..."

"And that's my cue to leave!" Tony slid a wad of cash in Joe's direction before getting down from his bar stool. If he was going to get a lecture on responsibility, he might as well do it across the street. At least Pepper was easy on the eyes. So he wandered back to the hospital, completely unaware that he had accidentally stolen Yang's chair from the ninety-nine cent store. If Meredith wasn't unconscious at the moment she would be lecturing her brother herself. 

_This is a typical Stark move._ He could hear her voice chiding him from inside her skull. _The exact second responsibility comes up in conversation you bail!_ He rolled his eyes. It wasn't like Mer was the pinnacle of responsibility herself. Up until a very recent divorce, she had been having a very public affair with McSteamy or McDreamy whatever they called the brain guy. Speaking of the brain guy, wasn't that him crying in Elis Grey's room?

Tony stumbled in to his step-mother's room. Pepper had fallen asleep on the couch just inside. He sympathized. Being with Elis for more than a few minutes was enough to tire anyone into a comma. Though he suspected their unscheduled cross-country trip may also have something to do with his assistant's snoozing. The brain guy didn't seem to notice Tony as he wiped a tear from his eye. He got off the couch, glaring at Elis.

"You broke her." Derek mumbled. "You call her ordinary. You taught her time and time again that nothing she does, ever, is good enough. Every good thing that Meredith is happened despite you."

A cold chill ran through Tony's body. Dr. Shepherd was putting to words something that Meredith and her brother never spoke about. Especially not to each other. From the day their families had merged Ellis Grey had made it clear that she had expected great things from both of them. After all he was the son of a wealthy inventor and she was the daughter of a world renowned surgeon. Howard Stark of course expected the same impossibly high standards. It was an uphill battle that both siblings still fought to overcome well into their adult lives.

"She may not survive this and that's on you." Derek hissed. This statement pulled the young billionaire from his own thoughts. Sure Ellis and Howard could probably take the gold for the worst parents in the last century, but could they really be blamed for Meredith drowning?

"What are you talking about?" He snorted from the doorway. Derek spun around, he had though he was alone in the room with Pepper.

"Meredith knows how to swim." Derek said as if what he was implying was obvious.

"You think that she went into the water on purpose?" Some of the drunken fog was clearing from Tony's head as he started putting the pieces together.

"She knows how to swim. She is a good swimmer." The sentence hung in the air. Tony highly doubted that what Shepherd was implying could be true. He had known Meredith most of his life, sure they had fallen out of touch recently, but this seemed an extreme accusation even for a Grey. Yet there was a sliver in the back of his mind that reminded him just how dark his own thoughts could be. He remembered the Olympic sized swimming pool they had in the mansion growing up. _She is a good swimmer._

There wasn't a lot of time to think after that. Elis' monitors began beeping. A nurse in the hall started calling for a code blue. Derek sprang into action. He was coordinating with the team of nurses to insert a breathing tube. Somewhere amongst the commotion, Pepper woke up. A male nurse had just begun CPR, when her hand brushed against Tony's elbow.

"Tony we should get out of their way." she said. He shrugged her hand away.

"No. I'm staying. I have to." Elis was gone in the blink of an eye. It had happened so quickly Tony was certain she'd been asleep. Then Pepper was dragging him down the hall towards an elevator. She said something about Meredith. They had to say goodbye to Meredith. Tony had never dealt with death well. His mother died before he was old enough to remember much about her. His father killed in a tragic car accident. Now it seemed he was going to lose the only family he had left all in a single day.

When they arrived in the ICU Yang and Burke were the only ones there. It seemed he had managed to coax her back to the hospital after all. Tony noticed, as his blood seemed to solidify in his body, that there were no other doctor's present. Only he and Pepper stood with Preston and Christina looking down at Meredith's already blue complexion. The monitors began to flatline just as they had upstairs for Ellis.

"Try again." Christina whispered. When she realized that Bailey and the Chief couldn't hear her she shouted at them in the hallway. "TRY AGAIN!" Miranda Bailey, who had never once taken orders from an intern during her entire medical career, shared and empathetic look with Richard Webber the Chief of Surgery. It was no secret that Webber had a soft spot for Grey either. Given that he and Elis were long time friends.

"Mr. Stark?" It took several seconds for Tony to realize Webber was asking for his permission as Meredith's next of kin. Despite every scientific molecule in his body telling him it would not work, he gave Webber the go ahead.

"One more round of ACLS drugs." Bailey said.

"One more." Webber agreed and they got to work. While it was obvious they were working hard, it was clear the medical team lacked the same ferocity that had been displayed upstairs. No one was expecting further treatments to work. The entire room had resigned Meredith to death.

There was a beep of hope.

"Sinus Brady. We got a heartbeat." Dr. Bailey observed. Burke produced his stethoscope and manually began checking for signs of life.

"We got it." He confirmed. Meredith Grey was alive.


	5. Breath (In the Air)

* * *

“Does that mean she’s breathing on her own?” Tony asked Dr. Bailey who was carefully pulling the breathing tube out of his sister’s mouth. Meredith Grey was alive. The room filled with air exhaled from her lungs. Dr. Bailey pulled the rest of the breathing tube out of her mouth. The doctors and nurses disconnected her from most of the machinery. 

“She is.” Bailey confirmed with watery eyes.

“She was down for a long time.” Dr. Burke observed. “Her heartbeat is still weak, but that’s to be expected.”

“What about brain function?” Tony asked. The doctors around the room looked at him. They probably were accustomed to being the smartest people in the room. They weren’t expecting him, a self-proclaimed playboy, to think of things like a heartbeat or brain function.

“Do we know what her brain function levels will be?” He repeated himself. “Because until we do, that’s not Meredith Grey. “That’s a body with a heartbeat. A zombie.”

“Mr. Stark, maybe we should…” Pepper put her hands on her boss’s elbow and tried to steer him out of the room.

“Don’t do that to me, Pepper.” He snarled, shaking her grip off. “I know what’s happened to her. I know that breathing is a good sign but I don’t want us to lose sight of the big picture. She’s alive, but she’s not through this. If you want to help, why don’t you go find the brain doctor. Tell him she’s breathing.” Pepper didn’t say anything. She knew when the time to argue with Tony was and when it was better to walk away. And right now, it was time to walk away.

“Miss Potts,” Dr. Burke followed her into the hallway. “Allow me to accompany you. It’s a pretty big hospital.”

“Thank you Doctor Burke but really…”

“I insist.” He smiled at her. “I know from Christina, that Meredith and her brother are not close. But did you know her well?”

“Truthfully?” She stopped walking. “I didn’t know that Mr. Stark even had a sister until I got the call from Dr. Shephard.” She began walking down the hallway again, Burke followed her. “You have to understand, Tony is a very private person. He doesn’t talk about things like family.”

“So you have no idea what it was that caused them to stop speaking?” Burke asked.

“If I did Dr. Burke, I'm not entirely sure it would be appropriate for me to discuss that with you.” Pepper frowned. 

“Of course,” He smiled. “This way.”

“You have to leave.” Christina insisted, pulling Tony out of the room.

“What are you talking about?” The billionaire raised his eyebrows. He shook away her grip, but followed her into the hallway. “I _don’t_ have to do anything.”

“Listen, I don’t know you and I don’t want to.” Christina snarled. “But there must be a reason why Mer doesn’t talk to you.” Tony opened his mouth to retort, but she held a hand up to stop him. “And I don’t need to know why. What I do know is there is a reason she doesn’t talk to you, and she would be pissed if she woke up to find you here. So, that means you’ve got to get back on your private jet and get the hell out of here.”

Tony wanted to tell Dr. Yang off. He wanted to shout that was his sister laying half dead in the bed. He wanted to tell her that now that Elis was gone he and Mer were the only family each other had left. He wanted to forget the night Meredith drove off in the middle of their last fight. He wanted to take back the things he’d said. But instead, he dragged his hand over his face.

“You’re right.” He admitted defeat. “She hasn't talked to me in all this time, and, hey, I haven't talked to her so why start now? I’ll get the first flight out of here. You take over her medical care or let the neurosurgeon do it I don't care. Just promise me, that one of you will be her person. Can you do that?” He raised and eyebrow. “Be her person and take better care of her then you have been? For god sakes, she knows how to swim!!”

That's how almost anyone who worked at Seattle Grace Hospital would remember Tony Stark. He was known through the rest of the country as charismatic and charming. For staff at Seattle Grace, he was Meredith Grey’s iill-tempered brother who swooped in when his sister was sick only to walk out again as soon as she was breathing on her own. Derek couldn’t believe it when the Billionaire came to swoop his assistant away with a hasty good bye. Neither could Burke, Bailey or the Chief.

Christina had to tell them what she’d said to him. They needed to know why Tony stark wouldn’t be coming back. They were better off without him. Meredith was better off without him. So, the decision was made not to tell Meredith that her brother had even come to Seattle. It would be better that way. If only someone would have remembered to fill Derek Shephard in on the plan.


	6. Swim

* * *

Derek stood in the doorway of Meredith’s hospital room. She was going to be alright. He couldn’t believe it, after everything they had been through in the last several hours. Though he supposed he should have known better. Meredith Grey was a fighter. She could do anything if she set her mind to it, including coming back from the dead. He’d been watching her sleep for a few minutes before she began to stir in the bed. She blinked her eyes and smiled when she saw him watching her.

“Hey.” He greeted her quietly from his spot in the doorway.

“Hey.” She said back. Derek crossed the room and gave Meredith a soft kiss. He’d though for hours about what he would say to her if and when she came to. It all faded away under her eyes.

“My mother’s dead, isn’t she?” She asked him. Derek blinked and nodded. He didn’t understand how she could have known that so soon. Maybe Christina had mentioned something while they were in the room together.

“It’s okay. I think.” Meredith assured him. “I think it’s okay.”

“There’s something else I have to tell you.” Derek had thought telling her about Ellis was going to be the hard part. She had taken that news so well, he worried what telling her about Tony was going to do. “I called your brother, Meredith.”

“What are you…?”

“Your brother Meredith. I called Tony. And he came.” He explained.

“You what?” Meredith tried to sit up in the bed, but Derek insisted she stay horizontal. “Why would you do that Derek! We haven’t talked in…”

“Five years?” Derek nodded. “At least that’s what his assistant said. But you’re missing the point, he came, Mer.”

“Is he here now?” Meredith raise an eyebrow and looked at Derek like she already knew the answer.

“Well no.” He frowned. “But only because Christina ran him off. She convinced him you would be better off without him. He made her promise that she would be your person and take care of you.”

“Derek, I promise you, you don’t know Tony Stark like I do.” Meredith sighed. “If he came here, it was because it was going to help him out somehow. Tony doesn’t do anything for any one unless there is a guaranteed reward in it. Maybe he had business here already or something, but he did not leave his cushy Malibu mansion or his New York penthouse for me. It just isn’t how Starks do things.”

“Well, I’m not going to argue with you. Not today.” He promised before kissing her again. “But I thought you should at least know that he did come here. He tried, Mer.”

* * *

That night, when all of her friends had either gone home or returned up to the surgical floor and back to work, Meredith found herself laying alone in the hospital bed. Derek had wanted to stay with her, but she told him to go home and get some rest or at the very least, crash in an on-call room. The poor man had been through hell that day. Maybe it was what Derek had said that afternoon, or maybe it was just surviving her near death experience that struck her sentimental chord. Whatever the reason, Meredith found herself reaching for the hospital phone and dialing her brother’s last known cellphone number.

It was three in the morning in Malibu where Tony was lying in bed naked, and some unknown woman lying next to him. His obnoxious heavy metal ringtone woke him from a dead sleep, but the broad in the bed continued to snooze on top of him. Tony managed to detangle himself from her and stretched for his phone.

“Hello?” He yawned, getting to his feet. The person on the other end of the line didn’t speak. Tony pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the caller ID. It was a Seattle number and Tony was willing to bet it was Seattle Grace Hospital. “Mer?” He questioned the phone.

“Tony.” Meredith’s voice came through the phone shaky and unsure.

“Hey sis. Long time no see.” He smirked. “Well, actually, I saw you a few hours ago, but you get the idea.”

“So, you _were_ here?” Meredith asked. She tucked the corded phone under the crook of her neck, and leaned back against her pillow.

Tony didn’t answer her. He couldn’t believe she was talking to him. He’d thought for sure that if she pulled through her ordeal with any brain function at all, she wasn’t going to waste it by calling him. For the past five years, he and Meredith had been communicating exclusively via monthly emails. They were always polite and to the point, but they both knew there were a lot of things that went unsaid in those emails.

“Well, you know I was in the area…” He half-whispered.

“ _You_ were in Seattle?” His sister called him out.

“Well no, not exactly. I was in New York when Pepper got the call.” He explained. “Which by the way, where did you pick up that Brain Surgeon? He does not seem like your type.”

“Tony,” Meredith sighed into the phone. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Do what?”

“That thing that we do where something happens to one of us, so we pretend for a while that everything is okay. You and I both know how it will end. What happened to me doesn’t change anything.” She said.

“You almost died Mer.” He disagreed. “And Ellis _did_ die.”

“So what?” Meredith chuckled bitterly from her end. “When Howard died, you went right back to work. I tried to be supportive, but you didn’t want me to help you. You didn’t need me then, and I don’t need you now.”

“Well, if you’re sure, I’ll let you go.” He said, trying not to let the bitterness show in his voice. “But Meredith?”

“Hmmm?” She asked the other line with a tinge of annoyance.

“Remember how to swim, okay? You used to be a great swimmer, and you can be even better without her as an anchor. I know it did wonders for me.” He said.

“Goodnight, Tony.” She said.

“Good night, Meredith.” He said. They would later both wonder if they would have said anything different, had they known it was the last time they would speak to each other before Tony was kidnapped.


	7. Highway to Hell

* * *

Tony sat in the back of a military transport vehicle on his way to a presentation. He was wearing one of his favorite suits and his absolute favorite pair of sunglasses. ACDC’s _Back in Black_ was playing on a beat up boombox someone had tossed between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. No one had talked to him since he’d been ushered into the vehicle, and the billionaire knew it was time to break the ice.

“If feel like you’re driving me to court-martial here.” He joked using his very limited military vocabulary. “This is crazy. What did I do? I feel like you’re gonna pull over and snuff me. What? You’re not allowed to talk? Hey! Forest!” He called to the guy sitting next to him in the back seat.

“We can talk, sir.” He answered stiffly.

“Oh. I see.” He smirked. “So, it’s personal.

“No, you intimidated them.” The driver explained.

“Good god! You’re a woman!” Tony was genuinely taken aback. He had assumed all three military members were men. “I honestly, I couldn’t have called that. I mean, I’d apologize, but isn’t that what we’re kind of going for, here? I thought of you as a solider first.”

“I’m an airman.” She clarified.

“My sister’s a doctor.” He shrugged. “You actually have excellent bone structure there. I’m kind of, having a hard time _not_ looking at you now. Is that weird?” Everyone in the vehicle chuckled, briefly. “C’mon! It’s okay! Laugh!” He encouraged them.

“Sir, I have a question.” The man in the passenger’s seat said, turning around to face the billionaire. “Is it true you went twelve for twelve with last year’s Maxim cover models?”

“That, is an excellent question.” Tony removed his sunglasses from his face. “Yes and no. March had a scheduling conflict, but luckily December’s cover was twins. Anything else?”

Their bliss was short lived as the car in front of them suddenly exploded. The female driver stopped their vehicle and exited with gun in hand. The passenger also hopped out of the car with instructions for the third man to stay in the car with Stark. It took only seconds to pass before Tony was left alone in the vehicle. There was a blast that shook the whole truck and then the windshield cracked. Another blast and the interior walls to his right looked like swiss cheese. With his ears ringing from the blast, Tony got the hell out of there.

* * *

“C’mon Meredith!” Christina swore under her breath as she banged on her best friend’s front door. “Four doctors live in this house and not a one of you knows how to answer a damned door?” She complained to no one. Finally, Alex Karev, another intern from the hospital opened the door.

“Karev?” Christina snapped at him. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“Oh, I live here now.” Alex explained. “I moved in this morning. Took O’Malley’s old room. What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to Meredith.” She insisted. “I need to talk to Meredith right now.”

“Uh, sure, come in.” Alex figured whatever Christina needed Meredith for could probably wait until morning, but he was smart enough to know not to get in the middle of those two twisted sisters. They were two halves of the same ticking time bomb.

“Mer! Yang’s here for you!” He yelled into the dining room, not caring that she was supposed to be having dinner with her dad and his new wife that night.

“Christina?” Meredith looked surprised when she stepped out into the hall. “What are you doing here? Oh, the fake emergency.” She nodded, now remembering. “Listen, you don’t have to do that. Things are going…well not fine, but it’s okay. You can go home.”

“No.” Christina shook her head. “There’s a real emergency. Turn on the TV.”

“The TV? Christina, I can’t the power is out. What’s going on?” Just then, the lights flickered back on. Derek and Meredith’s father, Thatcher Grey, entered the hall from the laundry room.

“Power’s back on.” Derek proclaimed proudly, his smile faded when he spotted his girlfriend’s best friend. “Christina, is everything, alright?”

“She was just saying something about the TV.” Meredith led everyone into the living room and turned on her mother’s old beat up television.

“Put on the news.” Christina instructed. “Any of them.” So Meredith flicked on the closest news channel and waited.

“Our top story tonight is the disappearance of Billionaire Tony Stark.” The anchor announced. A stone cold silence fell over the room as the news cut to a video of Meredith’s brother bruised, bloody and tied to a chair while a group of terrorists listed off their demands.


	8. The Kids Aren't Alright

* * *

“Meredith?” Izzie let herself into Meredith’s room where she was already lying in bed with Christina. “Hey, honey.” She frowned sympathetically at her friend. “Your dad and Susan are gone, Derek went home too. Alex and I cleaned up downstairs. Anything else I can do?”

“Lay with us.” Meredith suggested. So, Izzie flopped down on the bed at Mer and Christina’s feet.

“They’ll find him.” Izzie seemed positive. “Someone as high profile as that? He’ll be back within the week.”

“He’s the number one weapon’s developer in the free world.” Christina shook her head. “Was probably selling stuff to people on both sides.”

“Christina!” Izzie gasped before turning her head to glaring at her.

“What?” Christina shrugged. “I’m just being honest. Although, Dr. Barbie has a point, I’m sure they’ll get him back. Eventually.”

“Well, I’m going to choose to believe that it will work out in the end. That Tony will come home safe. I’m the meantime, I’m going to bed. Have fun wallowing.” Izzie groaned before getting up off the bed and leaving the room.

“Stevens could be right.” Christina leaned her head on Meredith’s shoulder.

“Yeah, or I could never see my brother again.” Meredith sighed. “Typical Tony.” She chuckled bitterly. “Just when I think he's going to stay in my life, he disappears.”

“What about that red headed woman, why hasn't she called you? The one who came with him when you were sick?” Christina asked. “His assistant? Piper or Pippa?” She racked her brain trying to think of the woman’s name.

“Pepper.” Meredith remembered, reaching for her cellphone that was already ringing.

“No, that's not it.” Christina shook her head.

“Christina it's Pepper, she's calling right now!” Meredith waved her phone at her best friend before answering.

“Yes, uh, hi I’m calling for Meredith Grey?” Pepper sounded tired. Her voice carried a great weight to it. “I’m just realizing now that I’m not certain if this is still her number.”

“Pepper, it’s me.” Meredith didn’t know what else to say. Should she ask about Tony? Should she be angry for not being called sooner? She decided to wait and see what the assistant said.

“Meredith, hello.” Pepper took a deep breath. How do you tell someone that their only living relative has been kidnapped by terrorists? “I called the hospital first, but they said you’d gone home. I had to have JARVIS look up your phone number. But, none of that is important. I’m calling because…”

“I saw the TV, Pepper.” The surgeon interrupted.

“I’m so sorry you had to find out this way.” Pepper inhaled another deep breath not really sure what to say. “All I had been told was there’d been an incident. I was waiting on more information from the military when I saw the news myself. Meredith I’m…”

“Stop saying you’re sorry.” The Surgeon snapped. “You didn’t have him kidnapped, did you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Okay. Then here’s what’s going to happen. You know Tony better than anyone, right? You need to be Tony until he gets back. I can’t help you. I don’t know the first thing about how that company runs. But you do, Pepper. They’re going to find Tony, and when they do, he is going to want to come back to his company. The best you can do for him is make sure he has something to come back to. Keep things going as normal as possible. It’s Tony we’re talking about.”

“Wow. Alright.” Pepper was a little taken aback by Meredith’s almost cold reaction to the situation, but then she remembered this was Tony’s sister. Pepper had heard many stories of Howard Stark form her boss and from what little she saw of Ellis Grey, the two must have made quite a pair. Apparently, they raised their two children to be much tougher than the world needed them to be.

“I’ll be sure to call you with any updated information I get.” Pepper said.

“Good.” Meredith replied. “I don’t like finding these things out on the television.” So, Meredith hung up the phone. It would be the last time she would hear from Pepper Potts for a while.

“What did she say?” Christina asked, tilting her head slightly to the side. She really did not like the version of Meredith that her family brought out of her best friend. Then again, the whole family was so toxic it was amazing Mer was still alive at all.

“She said she’ll let me know if she hears anything.” Meredith pulled the bed covers up to her shoulders and snuggled back up against Christina.

“Oh? Like she did when he went missing?” Christian snorted. She began to rant about something but Meredith wasn’t listening. Not really. She couldn’t help but think back to the day when she’d first met Tony Stark.

* * *

_Meredith and Elis left the city of Seattle following her parents’ divorce and shortly after her fifth birthday. For the first two years, it was just Mer and her mother. There was naturally a string of babysitters along the way, because that was the only way the single mother with no other family could still be a surgeon. When that wasn’t possible, she was shuttled off to the hospital daycare. Meredith didn’t mind being along so much. At least when she was alone she could do as she pleased._

_One morning Meredith came down the stairs for breakfast. She was expecting her babysitting at the time, a shiny, bubbly twenty-something named Becky. Instead it was Elis, sitting up straight at the counter island with a cup of coffee. When Meredith poured herself a bowl of cereal, her mother told her about the friend she’d met a few months ago._

_“He has a son about your age.” She said. “I’ve invited them over for lunch.” What else could Meredith say but, ‘okay’ before finishing her breakfast and scurrying right back upstairs? She didn’t come back down again until one o’clock when the front doorbell rang. Meredith stood at the top of the stairs. She had a perfect view of the front door from there. She waited, quietly, for her mother to answer the door._

_Standing on the front steps was a man roughly her mother’s age. His dark brown hair was meticulously arranged as was the dark brown mustache above his lip. His eyes were hard and expressionless but he smiled when he saw Elis. As Howard Stark stepped into the house his son followed a few paces behind. Meredith found herself walking down a few of the steps to get a closer look. Tony looked up at her, crossed his arms over his chest and frowned._

_“She’ll never be my mother.” Was the first thing the young boy said once they were alone together.”My father would never marry a doctor.”_

_“She’s not a doctor.” Meredith argued. “She’s a surgeon. One of the best.” Meredith knew this to be true because she had heard all of the other surgeons at the hospital saying as much. She puffed her chest out and glared at the boy._ _“You’re rude.”_

_“So are you.” Tony huffed. They sat in silence for almost an hour while the adults talked downstairs._

_Meredith was fine with this as she didn’t like Tony or his father all that much. She already had a dad, back in Seattle, and he would be coming for her any day. She was sure of it. So she was very content ignoring Tony while he fidgeted with his erector set. A heaping mess of aluminum parts, plastic, and motors was scattered around her bedroom floor but she didn’t even warrant it a second glance. Instead she sat on her bed playing with Anatomy Jane, taking the dolls organs out one by one and them putting them together in just the right order. She couldn’t wait for Mr. Stark and his son to leave._

Now though, Meredith found herself wishing she had answered his calls or at the very least put aside their petty fight years ago. Would they have turned out differently, she couldn’t help but wonder, if only she’d bothered to be kinder to Tony from the very first day?


	9. Death Is Not the End

* * *

Tony was only supposed to have been in Afghanistan for a few hours, a day max. He'd gone halfway around the world to show off his company's latest toys to the US Military who'd been operating there. Much faster than even the trained soldiers could have been expected to react their convoy, which had been on its way back to the base from the weapons demonstration, was attacked. Tony couldn’t do anything but freeze as he watched the men and women around him fighting for their lives and his. It would all be in vain as Tony was captured, despite the military's best efforts.

White searing hot pain was the first thing he remembered after that. He woke to find he was laying on something hard and flat. His chest burned, it felt as if it might explode. There was a team of people, maybe doctors, standing over him. At least they looked like doctors. They were wearing latex gloves and wielding surgical instruments. Were they putting something in his chest? He needed to stay awake. He needed to know more, but the pain was just unbearable. He'd never been so terrified in his entire life. This only made his heart pound faster and the fuzziness around his vision grow thicker and blacker. Finally, when Tony could bare it no longer he allowed himself to close is eyes and fall victim to the darkness.

When Tony next awoke, he realized that he was at least laying on some form of a bed this time. From what he could feel it was a cheap lumpy mattress pad laid over a camp cot. The uncomfortable presence of a breathing tube was a familiar feeling. It needed to go. So with the almost practiced hand of a surgeon’s step-son, Tony snaked the tube of off his own nostril.

He looked to his immediate left and saw a glass of water sitting on a bench. This forced him to realize just how dehydrated he was. Tony flung his arm out and tried to grasp the glass. It slipped further and further from the reach of his fingertips. He scooted his body over ever so slightly so that he could try again, but he still couldn't reach.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." A voice said in heavily accented English. If his head wasn't so fuzzy, he probably could have identified the dialect. 

Unable to see the source of the voice from his left side, Tony rolled over in the poorly fashioned bed to face his right side. There was nothing but a car battery resting on a fifty-five-gallon drum. The car battery had a set of cables running from it. One cable connected to the positive post and the other to the negative. Tony followed the trail of cables to see what the battery was powering. To his absolute horror, they ran across his body to a circular device that someone had indeed embedded in his chest.

* * *

At Seattle Grace Hospital, things went on as they always had. Missing billionaire brothers or not, people were still dying. People needed surgeons, and Meredith still very much wanted to be a surgeon. _Remember how to swim._ It was probably the most brotherly advice she'd ever gotten, or would ever get, from her brother. Especially with him having been kidnapped.

So that's what Meredith decided to do. She kept swimming. She kept treading the water that was her life. Things would continue to go just as they had before she'd nearly drown to death. She would continue to practice medicine. She would study for her first-year medical exams with her friends. She would help Christina plan her wedding to Dr. Burke. For the first time in her life she was going to live the way a Stark would, nothing was going to hold her back.

"You know Meredith," Derek was saying to Meredith's Step-Mother, Susan, one morning; "She'll accept a certain amount of help and then she starts feeling suffocated." He warned before sipping from his morning cup of coffee.

"Oh?" Susan looked over at him worriedly. "Is this..am I suffocating?" She asked, her arms weighted down with fresh groceries. She supposed she could understand what Derek was saying, but she had only wanted to help. Meredith had lost her mother and her brother within a few weeks of each other. That was enough to put mental strain on anyone, not even accounting for the fact that Meredith herself had almost drowned at the same time.

"Oh no." Derek replied. "The groceries are just right. It's me. I sometimes overdo it."

"Well, who could blame you, with everything?" Susan sighed as she heaved the groceries onto the counter. "I gave her sometime after Ellis died." She promised. "But I want to be here. I want to help make things easier."

"Good. Yeah." Derek nodded. He sipped from his cup again not able to shake the feeling that some of the stress Meredith had been under lately had been partially his fault. He'd thought contacting Tony when she almost died was important at the time. She was going through so much, now he wondered if he'd brought unnecessary strain back in her life knowing that he was missing. He'd tried to reason that had he gone missing and they not had the chance to speak, she'd been worse off than how she was now.

"Good morning." Meredith greeted Derek and Susan as she stepped into her kitchen. She was surprised by the abundant amount of food that was currently littering her counter tops. "This all you?" She asked Susan as Derek handed her a fresh cup of coffee.

"Yes." Susan said as she began putting the groceries away. "Just a few things to keep the cupboards full."

"But you brought groceries last week..." Meredith looked to Derek, not sure if she'd imagined this exact same situation seven days ago.

"Yeah." Derek smirked you have to get them every week if you want more."

"Well, thank you." Meredith said awkwardly as she reached for her coffee cup. "It's unexpected. You didn't need to do all of this." She spent the rest of breakfast watching Susan put away groceries. Eventually Alex came downstairs and helped himself to some of whatever it was that Susan had brought along. As soon as Meredith felt wouldn't be considered rude, she made her way to the hospital and hailed Christina for advice.

"I mean it's weird right?" She asked opening her locker in the intern's locker room. "That Susan keeps dropping by and bringing me groceries? I mean we've only just become friends or related or whatever you call your estranged father's wife."

"You may be confused, since you were basically raised by wolves." Alex piped up a few lockers over. "But this is what mother's do. They stop by, they stock the fridge. Dude, do you think she might do our laundry?"

"Hey! Get your own fake mom!" Meredith told him with a disapproving face. Christina seized this brake in their barely a conversation to shrug on her lab coat and leave the locker room. Mer would have followed right behind her if her cellphone hadn't rung. It was Pepper.

"Meredith, I'm sorry to have to call you like this." Pepper apologized immediately. Normally I wouldn't call you unless I had news, but I'm afraid I have to ask a favor of you..."

* * *

"She wants you to have your brother legally pronounced dead?" Christina gasped over her lunch. "I mean...can you even do that?"

"Apparently, I can and they want me to." Meredith sighed. She pushed her lunch around with her fork. "I mean I have no reason not to, right? What if he comes home? I mean is that something that happens?"

"I don't know any more than you do." Christina shrugged. Meredith was about to say something else when she spotted Susan wondering through the cafeteria.

"Susan?" She called out to the woman in confusion.

"Oh, Meredith!" Susan was relived. "I'm so glad I found you."

"You're here. Twice in one day." Meredith pointed out, her voice rampant with annoyance. First her home and now this.

"Is this a bad time?" Susan frowned noting the two women's lunches. "I mean, I know you're always busy..."

"Yeah, no, I'm busy. I'm at work." Meredith nodded.

"It's just that, I was..." Susan fumbled for the rights words as she remembered what Derek has said that morning about smothering. "You know, I'd really just love to talk with you. I would love to find the time for you and me to sit down..."

"I'm sorry." Meredith shook her head. She couldn't do this right now. No more family crap today. Not with Pepper already waiting for her to call back and give her permission to have her brother pronounced legally dead. "This is too much. Way too much. You keep showing up. I can not be your daughter. Or your charity case or the thing that you need to fix."

"I'm not trying too..."

"No." Meredith insisted. "No. Stop talking. Okay? Stop mothering. Just stop." She got up from the table and left her half eaten meal where it was.

"You can be my mom if you want." Christina offered before continuing to eat her lunch.


	10. Disenchanted

* * *

Even more time passed and eventually Meredith was able to patch things up with Susan. She shouldn't have yelled at the woman who was only trying to help. There were worst things, she realized than having someone who wanted to take care of you. When it came to parents she'd only ever really known overbearing. Howard and Ellis were both glaring examples of that.

But it seemed things never went well in Meredith's life for very long. In the end she decided that the best thing to do was to have Tony legally declared as dead. Pepper and the company handled all the paperwork. All Meredith had to do was fly out to New York for a weekend and sign her name on the dotted line as his next of kin. A small service was held to commemorate Tony's memory, but she didn't stick around for any of that.

Complete control of the company was passed on to the Stark's family friend Obadiah Stane. Pepper would be sticking around as his personal assistant since she apparently knew more about running the company than anyone besides Stane and Tony. No one had found a Last Will or anything like it for Tony so for the time being, his personal funds and property were frozen. Meredith felt conflicted about just letting go of everything Tony and Howard had worked so hard for over the years but ultimately she decided that were either of them around, they wouldn't have wanted her hands in things anyhow. So, she bid both Pepper and Obadiah professional goodbyes before boarding the flight back to Seattle and finally put to rest what remained of her East Coast childhood memories.

* * *

Things didn't improve once she returned to the West Coast. Susan, her newly forged maternal figure, was admitted to the hospital one day with a terrible case of the hiccups caused by her acid reflux. Susan died unexpectant of an infection during her hospital stay and somehow, at least according to Thatcher Grey, that was Merideth's fault. He accused her of letting Susan die on her watch. He said it was Meredith's fault that her stepmother died. All of the interns had either been there during Thatcher's big blow out or at the very least heard of it from someone else. They couldn't believe he'd said such terrible things to her on the morning of their all-important end of the first-year exam.

"We've got everything taken care of." Christina told Meredith as they gathered in the locker room with the rest of the interns.

"You don't have to worry about a thing." O'Malley agreed.

"I've got number two pencils, and bottled water." Christina continued.

"And Power Bars!" Izzie said, placing a handful of them on the bench next to Mer.

"You know the material. You're gonna get a high score, not as high as mine," Christina joked. "But everything is going to be fine."

"What are you guys all standing around for?" Alex asked, walking into the locker room late and last as usual. "Don't we have a test to...what happened?" He questioned when he saw Izzie, O'Malley and Yang all hovering over Meredith.

"You people need to head upstairs." Dr. Webber interrupted, stepping into the locker room. "Doctor Grey will join you shortly." He waited until it was just he and Meredith standing in the locker room before speaking again. "You are not to blame for Susan Grey's death." He assured her. "You know that, and your father knows it too. He's just...well he's never been the best communicator, and he just lost his wife."

"Stop." Meredith interrupted him. "Stop acting like my surrogate father. Just because you slept with my mother, that does not make you my father." She turned and followed the other interns so that she could take her exam. Dr. Webber decided to give Meredith her space. It was no use trying to talk to her when she was emotional. She needed to come around on her own.

Meredith sat through the duration of the exam. She stared straight forward and didn’t even look at the exam booklet. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't bring herself to write anything down. She didn't glance at the questions or the little bubbles where she was supposed to fill in the answer. Hours passed. She held her pencil in her hand and didn't write a single thing down. Her head was swimming and she couldn't focus on any one thought. All she felt numbness.

When the proctor dismissed the class, she left with all the other interns, but didn’t say a word. Everyone was concerned for her. It wasn't like Meredith. She'd gone from acting slightly unusual to outright worrisome. George tried to talk to her and on separate occasions Alex and Izzie too but it seemed there would be no talking to her. It was like Meredith had given up on herself. Like she actually believed the terrible things Thatcher had said. In a final attempt to get through to her, Dr. Webber gave Meredith another chance to take her exam. She shouldn't throw away her career, her new life because of all that she had lost.

"You're not my father." Meredith repeated what she'd told the chief earlier.

"I know that." He nodded. Meredith couldn't hold back the tears any longer. She angrily whipped them away as she glared up at Richard Webber. He was so meddlesome. Always trying to take care of her. Where had that gotten Susan? Or Tony? Or anyone half way decent in her life really.

Dr. Webber pulled Meredith into a hug. He could understand why she was pushing him away. Between Ellis always holding her daughter out at arms length and Howard Stark who he'd never thought of as a warm person either, she must have had a difficult childhood after she'd left Seattle. To think that once she finally came back she'd lost her brother and step mother and possibly Thatcher now as well? Richard just couldn't accept it. Someone needed to be there for Meredith. Someone needed to take care of her, even if she didn't want them to.


	11. The Phoenix

* * *

Four months past from the day that Meredith had found out from a television that her brother had been kidnapped by terrorist in Afghanistan. In that time she passed her first-year exams, as did Izzie, Christina and Alex. They all moved forward with their surgical program and became residents. George had unfortunately failed his exam and would be held behind for another year as an intern. Being upgraded to residents wasn't exactly what they all had hoped for since now they were each responsible for their own batch of lowly interns. One of these interns of course being O'Malley. Another was Thatcher and Susan's youngest daughter, and Meredith's half-sister, Lexi Grey.

"I hate them." Christina groaned as she sat down on a bed in random hallway. Alex, Izzie and Meredeth were all already there. They'd agreed to meet up to talk over lunch about how the interns were doing on their first day.

"You don't hate them." Meredith disagreed. She leaned her head back against the wall. "You hate you."

"This is horrible." Izzie huffed. "I think I'm a bad teacher."

"I have George as one of my interns." Mer frowned. They'd known once they found out that George had failed that he would most likely be assigned to one of them. Meredith had apparently drawn the short straw in that lottery. "The closest he's gotten to surgery all day was he delivered a baby in the O.R. I feel bad for him."

"I'm doing great with my interns. I'm rocking it." Alex nodded, proud of himself and completely uncaring of everyone else's bad mood.

"Why is everyone so tingly and hurt?" Christina huffed, ignoring that Alex seemed quite pleased with himself. "I mean I'm the one who was left at the altar."

"Yeah, and you took Meredith on your honeymoon to Hawaii without me!" Izzie complained.

"Girl on girl Honeymoon!" Alex winked.

"I'm fine by the way." Christina again ignored Alex. "I haven’t even seen Burke today."

"Wait." Izzie looked at her friend with concern. "You haven't seen or talked to him since the wedding and you're just _fine_? You're either incredibly healthy or completely messed up." Christina failed to comment as all four doctor's pagers went off in that exact moment.

* * *

George O'Malley stood in the middle of the maternity ward staring through the window at all of the newborn babies who had just been brought into this world. He supposed he was just like them wriggling and fumbling around trying to figure out his place in this hospital. He still had time. He reminded himself.

He still had time to make this right. He had time to pass the exam when he took it again in a few months and he had time to be a better doctor than he was last year. Lexi Grey was walking down the hall. She stopped when she saw George staring at the babies. She came over and stood beside them.

"It's like a cute festival in here." Lexi smiled.

"I delivered that one, an hour ago." He pointed on the glass to a baby boy that he had delivered in an operating room while the baby's mother was having her arm surgically reattached. He decided to spare Lexi the gory details. 

"Oh my god!" Lexi exclaimed with pride. "Why...why aren't you jumping up and down?"

"I've done this before!" George couldn't help but snap. "This is Déjà vu for me."

"George, you didn't pass your intern test. You know, it, it happens." Lexi said, trying to make him feel better. She'd never been very good at comforting other people. That was what her big sister Molly was best at. Lexi thought and she tried to say what she imagined Molly would if she were here. "It's, it's nobody's fault. Right?"

"Yeah." George sighed, but he still sounded bitter. "Yeah it's nobody's fault. It's just that Callie, my wife, gave _Christina_ the study cards and Meredith didn't write anything down, and Christina was planning a wedding and Izzie! Izzie just had to...You know, I'm responsible. I've always been the responsible one. I'm not saying W _hat about me?_ I'm not saying, _When do I get what I want? When do I get to be someone other than the guy who repeats his year?_ I'm not saying that. But..."

"But what about you." Lexi nodded with understanding. "I didn’t plan on being here." She admitted for the first time. "I was all set up for an internship at Mass Gen. And then my mother gets the hiccups and I'm at a funeral. You know we all have problems. Moms die, and Dads drink so much that they don’t even know what year they're in and sisters? I...I didn’t even know that there was Meredith Grey until a couple months ago. And she doesn't even want to talk to me."

"You mean when her brother went missing?" George asked. "That was how you found out you had another sister?"

"Yeah." Lexi huffed. "I saw her picture on TV. And they read a prepared statement saying she was letting the government handle the search for that billionaire guy that when missing. I guess he's her stepbrother. And she looked so much like me and my sister, Molly." Lexi shook her head. "One of the last things my mom said to be before she died was that she hoped Meredith and I could get to know each other. I don't _want_ to be here. You know? I'd give anything to not be here. To have my life work out the way I planned, and to even have time to ask, W _hat about me?_ So, you...you change. You get over it. I'm here now. So...and you? You delivered a _baby_ today! So stop feeling sorry for yourself."

"You," George chuckled. "Are kind of awesome."

"I know." Lexie said, giving him a small smile.

* * *

Meredith, having a few free moments decided to head to the maternity ward and check on the baby that George had delivered. The baby's mother was a single parent and still asleep following her surgery. Meredith wanted to check on the baby so that his mother could have good news when she woke up, but when Meredith turned the corner and saw George talking with Lexi she stopped. She had intended to turn around and come back later. But then she'd heard Lexi say her name so she stopped, and she listened.

She heard what Lexi said about promising Susan that she would get to know Meredith better. She'd also heard what she'd said about not wanting to be there. Meredith knew that if their situations were reversed, she wouldn't be at Seattle Grace Hospital. She would have taken that internship at Mass General, and she would have stayed far away from the sister who didn't want her. Because she was Meredith Grey and running away was what she did. _You did that already_. She reminded herself as she walked away. She could check on the Baby later.

She'd had all the chances over the years to make things up with Tony. Instead she went to medical school, like her mother. She became a surgeon, like her mother. She pushed away the people who mattered most to her, just like her mother. And for good measure, she moved to Seattle to put physical distance between her brother and his New York based company. At least in Seattle people knew her as Ellis Grey's daughter and not Tony Stark's sister. She'd been a decent daughter, but she'd never been much of a sister.

"Meredith!" Christina came sprinting up the stairs that Meredith had been going down.

"Christina? What's the matter? What's wrong." Meredith was expecting her friend to tell her that something was wrong with her patient, since the surgeon looked absolutely frantic.

"Pepper just called." Christina huffed. "They've found him."


	12. Back in Black

* * *

Meredith and Pepper stood next to each other silently. The wind on the air force base was whipping past both of them with such ferocity that it seemed Mother Nature herself was celebrating Tony's return. Meredith felt naked without her scrubs, it seemed she'd spent so much time living in them these days she hardly knew how to dress without them. She must have looked ridiculous in her tshirt, light jacket and jeans standing next to Pepper who was sharply dressed in a skirted suit. Tony's driver, Happy, was also dressed stylishly in a suit of his own. Happy hovered just a few feet away at the limo they'd all arrived in. All that was missing was the man of the hour.

"This must be them." Pepper whispered when a plane touched down on the landing strip they were closest too. The plane landed and the cargo bay opened.

"Is that...James Rhodes?" Meredith questioned in surprise when she recognized her brother's longtime friend.

"Yes." Pepper nodded. "He's a Colonel in the Air Force now."

Tony had certainly looked better. His arm was in a sling, probably broken. He was holding Rhody's hand and leaning a lot of weight on the Colonel to help walk. Meredith was trying to assess his injuries but she has to remind herself that she wasn't at the base for medical reasons. She'd come to see her brother and make sure that he really was alive. He might have been poorly patched up, but alive he was.

"Are you kidding me with this?" Tony asked Rhodey when a team of airmen brought over a stretcher. "Get rid of it." So, Rhodes waved the medical team away.

"His sister's a doctor." Rhodes whispered. Which seemed enough to pacify the concern of the other airmen. Rhodey gave small nods to Pepper and Meredith before stepping off to the side and allowing Tony to walk the last few steps on his own. He stumbled over to Pepper who tearing up at the sight of him.

"Your eyes are red." He squinted at her. "Tears for your long lost boss?"

"Tears of joy." Pepper nodded. "I hate job hunting."

"Yeah, well vacation's over." Tony sighed. "You came?" He said, noticing his sister for the first time. "I thought for sure you'd have stayed in Seattle with your dreamboat brain surgeon."

"A lot's changed while you were gone." Meredith told him. "I'm a much better swimmer now."

"Really?" Tony raised his eyebrows. "Good. You can tell me all about it later. Let's get in the car." Pepper and Meredith exchanged a glance, but Tony was already hobbling his way over to the limo.

"Where to, sir?" Happy asked, once everyone was in the car.

"The hospital." Meredith and Pepper said at the same time.

"No." Tony argued.

"Tony, you have to go to the hospital." His sister insisted. "You were held hostage for four months. You have a broken arm and who knows what's wrong with you internally. You could have damage that we can't see without an MRI or a head CT."

"No." Tony held firm. "I don't have to do anything. Yes, I was in captivity for four months. That means I get what I want first. There are two things I want, I want an American Cheeseburger and the other thing..."

"That's enough of that." Pepper interrupted him.

"Not what you think." Tony sighed. "Call for a press conference."

"A press conference?" Pepper looked at him and them Meredith as if the say _help me._ "What for?" Tony didn’t even bother responding to her. He leaned forward and tapped Happy on the shoulder.

"Drive." He instructed. "Cheeseburger first." Happy knew he really didn't have much of a choice but listen to what his boss wanted.

"I can't believe you two!" Meredith complained as Pepper started calling around to set up the press conference and Happy drove to the nearest Burger King. "Is it their job to just give you whatever you want?" She snapped at her brother.

"Yeah." He nodded. "That's pretty much what I pay them for." He put a pair of sunglasses on that he found in the car's door and leaned back in his seat.

"Tony, this is serious. You could die!" Meredith huffed.

"I know! I very well might die if I don't get my cheeseburger soon!" Tony called to Happy.

"Anthony!" His sister gently pushed his shoulder. Tony's head snapped back to Meredith. Did she seriously just full first name him?

"Meredith," He said her name very slowly and calmly. "I can not tell you how happy I am that you are here. I know that things have been pretty shitty between us, and I know that you are a doctor and that you want me to go to the hospital and see a doctor. But there are things I have to do first, okay? So please, if you're going to stay, you have to sit there and shut up, while I eat my cheeseburger."

Meredith leaned back in her seat and Happy handed a greasy bag of Burger King to Tony. She wanted to continue to argue with him. She couldn't help it, Tony just seemed to bring that out in her. At the very least he'd said he was glad she was there. She didn't want to further damage their relationship, so she decided to give him a few hours to see what exactly he was up to.

Pepper pulled together a press conference with incredible speed. An hour after picking Tony up from the Air Force base, they were stepping out of the limo and into a whirlwind of photographers and reporters. Obadiah Stane was there to greet them. He even opened Tony's door and helped the Billionaire out of the car.

"Look who it is!!" Obadiah smiled, pulling Tony into a hug. "I thought I'd be meeting you at the hospital." He looked over Tony's shoulder at Pepper and Meredith.

"We tried, believe me." Meredith assured him. Obadiah led Tony into the building with his arm around the younger man's shoulder. Pepper trailed closely behind them and then Meredith and Happy followed even further back.

Inside one of the company's auditoriums that was typically used to demonstrate new technology, was a waiting horde of reporters clamoring for their slice of Tony Stark's story. Meredith shook her head. She remembered what a circus these sorts of things could be. Whether it was Howard or her mother up at the podium, she never much cared for the media's probing questions. Somehow, as she watched her brother struggle his way to the front of the room, she managed to disapproval of them even more. Obadiah swaggered into the room waving and smiling like the ringmaster that he was. When Tony managed to finally get up to the front of the room, he sank down and sat in the front of the podium with his half-eaten cheeseburger still in hand.

"Would it be alright if everyone just sat down?" Tony took a bite of his burger. "Just sit down. Then you can see me and we can all just be...a little less formal."

"Miss Potts?" Pepper, Meredith and Happy were watching from the back of the room when a man wearing a visitor's badge pulled Pepper aside.

"Oh, I'm...not part of the press conference." She tried to wave the man off and bring the attention back to Tony, but the man wasn't listening.

"I'm not a reporter." He smirked. "Agent Phil Coulson. I'm with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division."

"That's quite a mouthful." Pepper remarked. Meredith was beginning to realize just how out of place she was in Tony's adult life. Tony didn't just have Pepper to be his person. He had Obadiah, Rhodey, and Happy and all of these other people who were at his beck and call whenever he needed them. So why would he need his sister? She wasn't even his real sister. She thought about asking Happy for a lift back to her hotel, but Tony himself once again had her attention when he began addressing the crowd.

"I never got to say goodbye to my father." He told the attendees before placing his burger down. "There's questions I would have asked. I'd have asked him how he felt about what his company did. If he was conflicted, if he ever had doubts. Or maybe he was every inch the man we remember from the newsreels." Tony was looking out at the crowd, but the glazed look in his eyes indicated that his mind was far away. "I saw young Americans killed by the very weapons I created to defend them and protect them. And I saw that I had become part of a system that is comfortable with zero accountability." A reporter in the front row raised his hand.

"Mr. Stark, what happened over there?" The reporter asked once Tony pointed to him.

"Well, I had my eyes opened." Tony seemed to find the strength to rise to his feet. He circled up to the back of the podium so that he could speak directly into the microphone. "I came to realize that I have more to offer this world, than just making things blow up. And that's why, effective immediately, I am shutting down the weapons manufacturing division of Stark Industries."


	13. Do You Want to Know a Secret

* * *

"So, he's just shutting down the entire Weapon's division? That's what seventy-five or eighty percent of the company? Can he do that?" Christina Yang was entirely surprised by what Meredith was telling her. The two best friends were talking on the phone the night after Tony's press conference. Meredith was laying on the bed in her hotel room, with the phone pressed against her ear.

"Well he's CEO and majority shareholder." She explained. "I think that means that he gets to do whatever the hell he wants."

"Wish I could do whatever the hell I wanted." Christina mumbled into the phone. "Like get rid of my useless interns. Speaking of which, when are you coming back? You interns are dumber than mine. I don't want them anymore."

"They can't all be that bad." Meredith rolled her eyes. "They passed medical school, so they have to know something." She knew the real reason Christina was asking because she missed Meredith and wanted her back in Seattle. "I don't know when I'm going back. I still really haven’t talk to Tony. And I'm not entirely convinced he hasn't lost his mind." There was a knock on the door of Meredith's hotel room. "Christina I gotta go, someone's at the door." The two ended their conversation, and Meredith was unsurprised to find her brother waiting on the other side of the door.

"You know," Tony said as he stepped into the standard looking hotel room. "You could come stay with me at my place." He offered while she shut the door.

"I wouldn't want to be in your way. Besides I'm not staying very long. I have to get back to work." She reminded him. "I just came to see if you were okay, but since you won't go to a doctor..."

"And if I say I'm not okay?" He asked sitting on the very same bed she had just been laying on. "What if I tell you I saw things so horrifying that I still see it when my eyes are closed."

"You don't need to say it." Meredith told him. "I can see it in your face. I'm not going to ask you what happened over there or how you feel. That's not what we do. And I know things haven’t been great between us, and you don’t owe me any explanations, but as your sister I want to at least know why you won't see a doctor. You're obviously unwell."

"Because Mer," Tony sighed before shrugging off his suit jacket. "I don't think a doctor can help me with this..." Tony pulled off his tie and unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt. It felt appropriate for Meredith to be the first person to see the device that was keeping him alive. She used be the first person he’d show his new inventions to as a kid because she was the most supportive.

“ _What is that?”_ Meredith gasped. Embedded in the center of Tony’s chest was a circle of glowing blue light.

"Do you remember the arc reactor that powers the Stark Industries building?" He asked, already buttoning his shirt again.

"The power source that Howard invented that was supposed to replace nuclear power?" Meredith nodded. "But I thought he only ever made the one. He couldn't figure out how to make them cost effective."

"Well, that's what this is, but smaller." He explained. "It works and I know it works because while I was over there, some shrapnel...well let's just say it's embedded in my chest..."

"You have shrapnel in your chest?" Meredith was shocked.

"The shrapnel is inconsequential. Focus. Listen, the point is I've figured out how to make these work." He tapped the arch reactor under his shirt. "I think."

"You think?" Meredith raised her eyebrows.

"Yeah, I mean, this is technically the second one but..."

"The second one of those things you put into your chest?" Meredith was beside herself. "Tony I'm not going to be able to go home. I'm going to have to stay here. You're clearly not..."

"Meredith, Mer... I'm fine." Tony promised. "I had to get rid of the first one it was short-circuiting and you know Pepper helped me, she has good small hands."

"Pepper? Tony I am your sister and a surgeon! Why didn't you ask me..." She asked.

"Because I knew you'd have said no. You'd have wanted me to fly back with you and have your angry friend Yang do it or one of your other surgeon friends, but I had to do it because the technology is strictly classified at the moment. I couldn't say before when we were around everyone, but someone in the company; someone high up in the company, has been selling weapons to both sides. I know for sure it wasn't Pepper, but until I find out who it was I can't risk this technology getting out faster than I want."

"Then why tell me? If it's so important that you wouldn't trust me to keep the shrapnel away from your heart, why are you sharing this information with me?" Meredith sat on the hotel room's other bed and looked at her brother expectantly.

"Because you're my sister Mer." He said as if it should be obvious. "When Pepper told me she got that call from your brain surgeon, my heart practically stopped. I got on the first plane and made sure I was there. You flatlined in front of me!" Tony brushed a hand through his hair. "I never...I mean...I saw Ellis when she died, and I had empathy. I knew how it was going to affect you, but then to have you die a few hours later on the same day? It was unbearable. One of the few things I could think about while I was gone, was how you must have felt knowing I had disappeared."

"So," Tony took a deep breath before patting his sister on the knee. "I want you to know that I'm okay. You're not gonna lose me any time soon, and we are going to talk more. We don't need one of us almost dying again to bring us together, okay? Now I do have a lot of things to do in New York at the main office, but there are things I can do at the LA office too. Maybe in between trips I can stop off in Seattle a few times? And when things quiet down maybe we can get together for holidays or you know something."

Meredith wanted to tell him that he didn't have to do that. They'd gone this long without enduring each other during holidays, but truthfully, she had missed Tony. Maybe it was the idea that she would never see him again that had made her miss him so much. Maybe it was her half-sister, the bubbly and shiny Lexi Grey who'd made her realized that Tony was probably the only person who would ever understood every aspect about her and her life. Whatever the reason, she surprised them both with what she said next.

"I would like that very much Tony." She smiled.

"We've come a long way from me playing with my erector set and you glaring at me from your bed, haven't we?" He chuckled.

"I wasn't glaring!" She laughed. "Besides you were horrible to me the first day."

"Oh, because you were the perfect model of congeniality?" He chuckled himself.

"Alright, fair enough." Meredith smirked. "Though I suppose I'm not doing much better this time around. While you were gone I found out I have a sister. Two of them actually, but one of them doesn’t want anything to do with me."

"Oh shit. What's she like?"

"Truthfully, I have no idea." She sighed. "Because I don't want to get to know her Tony. Whoever this girl is, she’s not my sister. She came from one of those granola households with the picket fence and two loving parents. We have nothing in common.”

“Well, you’ll never know unless you get to know her, right?” He asked. “If for nothing else, get to know her better just so you can say ‘I told you so’ later. You always liked that.”

“I’m really glad that you’re home, Tony.” Meredith confessed.

Me too, Sis.” He said, getting up from the bed.

“You’re sure that you’re going to alright?” She asked. “You know with the shrapnel and all?”

“Who me?” He pointed at himself, wearing that trademark smirk that always made him look so smug. “I’ve never been better, but if it will ease your conscious, I promise Pepper or I will call you if there’s ever anything we can’t handle.” Tony started walking towards the door when Meredith called out to him.

“Tony, one last thing. You and Pepper?” She questioned.

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out myself.” He chuckled and headed out the door.


End file.
